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Deep below NYC, workers expanding nation's biggest transit hub; $15B in new tracks, tunnels
NEW YORK (AP) -- Sixteen stories below Grand Central Terminal, an army of workers is blasting through bedrock to create a new commuter rail concourse with more floor space than New Orleans' Superdome, just one of three audacious projects going on beneath New York City's streets to expand what's already the nation's biggest mass transit system.
But even with blasting and machinery grinding through the rock day and night, most New Yorkers are blithely unaware of the construction or the eerie underworld that includes a massive, eight-story cavern, miles of tunnels and watery, gravel-filled pits.
"I look at it and I'm in wonder, I'm in awe," says engineer Michael Horodniceanu, president of capital construction for the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "I feel like when I went to Rome and entered St. Peter's Basilica for the first time. ... I looked at it and said, 'Wow, how did they do that?'"
In New York, they hauled out so much rocky debris from under Grand Central that it could have covered Central Park almost a foot deep, Horodniceanu says.
Together, the three projects will cost an estimated $15 billion. And when they're all completed, tentatively in 2019, they will bring subway and commuter rail service to vast, underserved stretches of the city, particularly the far East and West sides of Manhattan.
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Ex-LA police officer wanted in 2 killings was represented by victim's father in firing hearing
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Police have launched a manhunt for a former comrade suspected of gunning down a college basketball coach, her fiance and leaving a rambling manifesto that threatened more violence.
Former Los Angeles police officer officer Christopher Jordan Dorner is the suspect in the killings of Monica Quan and her fiancι, Keith Lawrence, who were found shot to death in their car at a parking structure Sunday night, Irvine police Chief David L. Maggard said at a news conference Wednesday night.
Dorner, 33, implicated himself in the killings with a multi-page "manifesto" that he wrote that included threats against several people, including members of the LAPD, (Continued on page 30)
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